Terminal City: Vancouver's earliest art online

A restoration of ANIMA & digital eARTh

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Timeline

CANADA ONLINE THE EARLY WEB
1993–1994

APRIL 1993
Mosaic browser released

  • The first popular graphical web browser.

DECEMBER 1993
Canada’s Web becomes publicly visible

  • University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and McGill University are online with early Web servers
  • Internex Online, Hookup Communications, UUNET Canada appear in Mosaic indexes
  • Online construction of Arts Network for Integrated Media Applications (ANIMA) begins

JANUARY 1994

  • ANIMA enters beta testing
  • Vancouver-based platform connecting artists, technologists, and cultural institutions through networked media. Aspired to create a critically and technologically advanced media arts infrastructure for the digital age—one of the earliest media-art Web platforms globally. Derek Dowden leads the initiative for ANIMA.

FEBRUARY 1994 (Montréal)
Cultural platforms are still nascent

  • Archie fades as the World Wide Web rises — McGill’s pioneering FTP search engine cedes influence to web-native tools
  • Québec ISPs (Internex, iSTAR) begin enabling small press and arts groups to experiment with web hosting
  • Cultural platforms are still nascent.

FEBRUARY 1994 (Vancouver)
Vancouver emerges as Canada’s cultural Web hub (briefly)

  • Webweavers (Vancouver) begins hosting Web experiment
  • CISR (Centre for Image and Sound Research) at Simon Frasier University and Western Front explore Web distribution
  • CISR, Webweavers, and ANIMA collaborate as distinct organizations

MARCH 1994
One of the earliest media-art Web platforms globally goes live. Web content diversifies

  • ANIMA officially launches on March 1, 1994
  • Cultural prototypes from WebWeavers and Western Front appear online
  • University pages expand while early student and research pages proliferate

APRIL 1994
Canada shifts from infrastructure Web to content Web

  • Western Front publishes first online electronic-media documentation
  • Vancouver Free-Net begins basic HTML gateway

1995
Major cultural institutions follow artists and early adopters to the web

  • The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) establishes an online presence via a text-based catalogue

1996

  • Canadian Broadcasting Corporation assembles its news website (1996)

1997

  • NFB releases its first web-specific production